“The boy you tortured was Rupert’s brother? That’s why he hates you?”
“No, it was a warning. Scare Rupert. Make him back off and let me live my life. Didn’t work. Rupert is the son of my father’s enemy. They have been trying to ruin our family long before you were in the picture. After I got the Yellow Card, he became more obsessed. Every problem I have had, he has been near.”
“How obsessed?” I ask softly.
His mouth curves into something that’s not quite a smile.
“I visited the Council on their yacht. Rupert had his wife try to seduce me. Walked around topless. Invited me to her hotel.”
My stomach turns. “You didn’t touch his wife? On the yacht, or… hotel,” I say. It isn’t a question. It is a plea.
His gaze hardens. “I told her I am married. She did not care. I did. And that is why she failed. I am many things. Unfaithful is not one. If I wanted whores, I would not bother with a wife.”
Relief floods me so fast my eyes sting. I nod, unable to speak for a second.
He continues. “Rupert also arranged the flat tire,” he says. “Had someone remove the spare. Left us broken down at the border of the exclusion zone. He wanted us in that forest. Heknew there was a rogue faction of madmen in there. He wanted us dead. Petyr died because of him.”
I picture Petyr’s grave face. His steady presence. Keira’s quiet grief.
“Gustav,” I whisper. “I am so sorry.”
“He is missed,” Gustav says, guarded. “But there is more.”
Of course there is. There always is.
“Rupert planted a man at St. Andrews,” Gustav continues. “Someone to test you. To tempt you. To make you doubt me. To make me doubt you. To push you toward the Council.”
My throat closes.
“His name was Brutus. You remember him?”
There is no point lying about that part.
“Yes,” I say. “I remember him. He was my partner in the self-defense classes. He was kind.”
His eyes flicker. “Kind,” he repeats, like the word tastes bad. “Did you sleep with him?”
The question hits like a shout even though he speaks it quietly.
“No,” I say immediately. “Never. I didn’t touch him that way. I never cheated on you.”
One muscle jumps near his left eye. A tic. A tell. The storm knocking politely at the inside of his skull.
“He was normal. That is all. It never went beyond that. I swear it.”
He studies me through a long, suffocating pause. Then he nods once, as if filing that away without telling me where.
I stand slowly. My legs feel unsteady, but I need air. I turn toward the door.
“Peighton,” he says.
I stop with my hand on the knob. “Yes?”
His voice is almost casual when he speaks again, and that makes it worse.
“Brutus and Boris are rather similar names.”
My breath catches. Ice creeps into my veins. He knows? His question. The name he forced out of me.
